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You sit, and you stir,
you grieve and you grieve.
The longer you sit at the ocean
you lose more time than you think.
It's in the clink of their glasses joining in a toast, amber liquid sloshing against the sides only to settle back down. In the way he tells Eggsy to look in the mirror, asking the younger man what he sees. In the words of assurance spoken with certainty. It is in his smile-- a thing of watered-down emotion seeping through, only the barest hint of the flurry in his chest coming to the surface-- offered in an attempt to comfort the other.
He struggles against the waves crashing around him. Breathes.
It is the one thing that Eggsy cannot take note of in this moment, not even with eyes trained by years of experience and a honed sense for reading into the people around him. Harry knows what Eggsy is capable of, knows how Eggsy sees, and he uses it to his advantage now.
Harry keeps his distance as he directs his gaze onto Eggsy's reflection. Oh, his mind supplies, you really haven't any idea, have you?
Harry stands at Eggsy's side as they both watch the church doors open, sunlight spilling onto the floor and then some, until it seems like the whole of the grandiose hall's aisle is bathed in it. He watches the next moments unravel with rapt eyes, all the while managing to carry a smile on his face.
The sound of two rings dropped onto a palm is far louder to Harry's ears than it is to anyone else's, and yet, Harry stays right where he is.
He isn't angry at anyone. Not at Tilde, and certainly not at Eggsy.
He only had his own self to blame, after all. That was just how it had been for the entirety of his life; he doesn't feel the need to change it now, of all times.
As the priest drawls, "Speak now, or forever hold your peace," Harry entertains the thought for a fleeting second. Would you?
The prompt reverberates through the church. Harry trains his eye to stare at the white marble floor, as if it helps. In a way, it does; he can avoid looking at the way Tilde's hands are wrapped in Eggsy's, and he can ignore the tight squeeze he feels when he realizes that Merlin isn't there to stare him down and force out the damned monster that had eaten its way into Harry's being.
He drowns in the silence that follows, allowing his heart to go down with it. In the end, it's simple. No.
Much later, in the hours well after the night, Harry sits alone in his office. He nearly wonders if Eggsy had ever felt something for him, anything. A tide of emotion, or even the slightest pull. Wonders if he could, after ten bottles of scotch perhaps, muster more than enough stupid courage to make up for the times he should have replied to those eyes with a soft stare of his own.
Just as he starts to catch his breath to dive in again, Harry thinks better of it.
In a drunken haze, he doesn't see any reason to. He lets go instead, and the waves carry him where he can't be reached.
FIN.